Survey @ ‘Indian Libraries slow to provide mobile access to content’, reveals first of its kind survey with Librarians
Gurgaon:
On the occasion of National Librarian Day*, Knimbus, a leading Cloud-based
eLibrary platform, released findings of a survey conducted with librarians
across India on their current adoption of digital, perceived challenges and
benefits, future plans and the influence of the Government’s ‘Digital India’
initiative on making libraries digital.
As
per government data 1, there are 799 universities, 39,071colleges and 11,923
stand-alone institutions in India and there are about 34.6 million Higher
Education students. The number of public libraries in India is over 70,000. But
less than 10% students use the physical library.
With
mobile Internet users expected to cross 500 million users by 2017, consumption
of information has moved to the mobile. IAMAI (Internet & Mobile
Association of India) estimates that smartphone users spend 72 percent of their
time to consume information on their mobile devices. This shift has
increasingly impacted physical libraries which haven been witnessing a
significant drop in the usage of their facilities.
The
Knimbus survey reveals interesting findings as to where India’s libraries are
in their digital journey. None of the library respondents were fully digital,
while 71 percent of libraries were partially digital. A fully digital library
provides users with access to the complete library content via online devices
such as laptops, tablets or smartphones, on an integrated search platform to be
accessed any time and anywhere.
However,
the majority of respondents confirmed their plans to go fully digital by 2020.
56 percent said that a mobile device – either mobile or laptop is a preferred
medium for accessing library services. There is a high degree of understanding
of the advantages of going digital. More than 60 percent respondents agreed
that ‘anytime and anywhere access of e-resources’ and ‘a diverse range of
content all at one place’ are the biggest benefits of a digital library.
Perceived high cost was cited as a barrier to digital adoption by 72 percent
currently. A majority credited the Government’s ‘Digital India’ initiative with
having a positive impact on accelerating the digitization of libraries
KEY FINDINGS @ A GLANCE-
81%
of libraries plan to go fully digital by 2020
56%
confirm that a mobile device – mobile or laptop is the preferred medium for
users to access library services
60%
cite ‘anytime and anywhere access of e-resources’ and ‘diverse range of content
all at one place’ to be the biggest benefits of a digital library
72%
perceive costs to be the barrier to digitization
92%
credited the government’s ‘Digital India’ initiative with accelerating
digitization of libraries.
Knimbus
introduced its cloud based eLibrary platform 3.0 that integrates high quality
knowledge-content for learners such as e-books, e-journals, online courses from
top professors across international universities and curates multi-media
content from sources such as TED Talks, Edx, Coursera, Slide Share and more.
The platform offers premium academic content from over 500 national and
international academic publishers and more than 100,000 free e-books and 10,000
open access e-journals for users. Knimbus 3.0 would be accessible to users
through the Knimbus mobile app that is available for academic institutes on
demand. With this offering Knimbus is looking to bring academic libraries
closer to learners making it no less than a Netflix of education.
“Learners
want a focused learning path in today’s age of information overload and fake
news. They want knowledge-based services to be available to them on the go and
without the distractions of search and social media,” says Rahul Agarwalla,
Founder & CEO, Knimbus. “Knimbus provides a focused service for college
students that maps all relevant content to their degree or course. Users can be
selective of the content they require, thus providing them with a personalized
knowledge application,” Rahul adds.
Knimbus
has till date digitized 450+ libraries across India including Niti Aayog-New
Delhi, Visvesvaraya Technology University (VTU)-Bangalore, Indian National
Academy of Engineering (INAE)-Gurgaon, National Defense College (NDC)-New
Delhi, National Institute of Technology (NIT)-New Delhi, Sharda University-Delhi,
and many more.
*National
Librarian Day is celebrated on August 12th every year by the community of
librarians across India in remembrance of renowned professor of library
science, Dr. S R Ranganathan (12th August, 1892- 27th September, 1972), who was
behind the advance of libraries in India.
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior Manager @
Knowledge Repository
Khaitan
& Co
Upcoming Conference | National Conference on Transforming Libraries into
Knowledge Resource Centres 11th – 12th January 2018, SNDT Mumbai For further
details contact Prof Jyoti Bhabal (jyotibhabal@gmail.com )
Twitter
Handle | @Pralhad161978
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